Verily So

Now, let's imagine for a moment that somewhere among the Tuscan hills, where you can sense the sea nearby, Samuel Beam and Arcade Fire happened to meet one day, who knows, in some cheap tavern or at the door of a drinking club; let's imagine that there's a guitar nearby, and that both Beam and Arcade Fire that morning – a memorable coincidence – had gorged themselves on the intangibility of Slowdive, the pathological sensitivity of Nick Drake, and the meticulous roughness of J Mascis: well, from that encounter, from the attempt to improvise a few verses in front of a bottle of Sassicaia, what would come out is Verily So.

Albums like "The Shepherd's Dog" and "The Suburbs" must have been listened to with real devotion, because let's be clear: Verily So, a folk, indie, shoegaze and much more band from the Tuscan countryside, don't invent anything, but what makes them a great band, along with several other elements we'll get to, is that they don't claim to.

Live (we saw them a few nights ago, at Red Vibes in Castellina Marittima), Verily So play the songs from their debut album, released this year and immediately the object of widespread attention, equally shared by industry insiders and listeners alike; Verily So devour the stage, buoyed by a forceful yet quiet charisma that seems to envelop the room from the very first chords of "Will You Marry Me", the song that opens the live set; and, however much the term better suits the sterile language of television, Verily So work. For a few reasons worth highlighting.

Because you need to listen to them, and just listen; Verily So hypnotize you, gag you, and carry you up onto the stage with them, and by the time you catch yourself with your eyes closed, head and foot following the echo of the beats with which singer Marialaura pounds and punctuates the songs' progress on your eardrum, it's too late to think of turning back.

Because there are three of them, only three, yet from those three comes an imposing, perfectly chiseled acoustic structure, one that doesn't shy away, quite deliberately, from rougher, less ethereal shades.

Because they're skilled, which, admittedly, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a great band: Simone, Marialaura and Luca know how to play, and they know how to sing. And they do it well, which is no small thing. Because they're enchanting, then powerful, then spiritual: they make music that's diaphanous, devotional, evocative of places we've never been.

Because, inventing nothing, all that's left for them to do is write good songs, and that's exactly what they do: this, precisely, is what makes Verily So great.

Listen to their debut album; listen to "Will You Marry Me", listen to "Wax Mask", listen to "Summer 89", and if you don't like them, listen to it all again, because it means you're missing something.

Lastly, because they're ours, they're Italian like us, which, from an opportunities standpoint, might not make Verily So terribly happy, but for once, let the three of them allow us a little clean-cut patriotism, that quiet satisfaction we feel when we discover something worth recommending urgently.

(09/11/2011)

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